Wanna see what the Wii HD games are gonna look like?

This is indeed cool. I fired up an iso today with Dolphin (yeah one I bought ) of Boomblox and it did run! I was having a hard time keeping up framerate though - averaging in the mid 20's on a quadcore Intel at 3.2GHz with an ATI 4870. Yet it still ran! I've never tried to back up any of my other discs so that was the only one I could try. It certainly seems single threaded. The first core was pegged out and the others were sleeping. This also seemed to be at 640x480 in a window -I didn't really play with settings. I really don't see a whole lot stopping todays modern systems from running wii games other than getting that emulation down.

-Trouble

Looks great. Too bad you have to go through all that trouble (and money) just to play the game in HD.

Yea that's why IMO the wii HD will be announced at E3. If they dont push the new console soon and people see what it "could" do then once they roll it out 3-4 years down line people would already built it with PC parts and downloaded ROMS.

Uh, Nintendo doesn't exactly build its development/marketing/any strategy based around what the hardcore emulating community does.

If Wii HD is announced at E3 I will literally eat my own arms off.

When their system is highly pirated via chip or software I would beg to differ. Why do you think the DSi came out? To stop piracy of DS games although that didnt last long as there are already cards that work in the DSi's.
Other then the camera's there are no real advantages to a DSi.

If it's not announced at E3, i would bet a new wiiHD console by holiday 2010.

I wouldn't mind getting a Wii HD. The main thing that sucks is that they would have to make new games for it. I would have just preferred they made the original Wii in HD. That way I could play my current collection in HD. I just find myself avoiding the Wii more and more because it's so hard going from playing games in 1080p then playing in upscaled 480p.

Nintendo never refreshes their home console hardware, and piracy or no, they certainly wouldn't do so now and risk alienating the userbase that doesn't want to upgrade. And they definitely wouldn't do so for the originally stated reason of an upscaling emulator being available. The portion of their user base that could even get that emulator running, much less build their own WiiHD out of spare PC parts, must be like 1% of 1%. And even less than that for their actual target user base.

I also doubt the DSi was released just to combat piracy. Sure, they futilely tried to lock it out as a matter of course when designing the new hardware, but I'm guessing the main reason they released it is because it's been proven time and again that people will readily snap up new revisions of portable hardware. (Maybe it just seems more disposable.) I mean, were the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Micro, and DS Lite all released just to combat piracy as well?

No one can predict the future of course. I'm just saying that a WiiHD anytime soon would be really uncharacteristic of them. There's just no reason for them to do so.

Wow. Very nice! I would LOVE a simple console option to play Wii and cube games like that.

I was recently amazed when I stumbled on a thread over at GAF regarding Dolphin... the Wii/GCN emu community has continued to push Dolphin WAY beyond what I imagined it would be. My un-inspired imagination basically pictured it maxing out at either 720p @ 20FPS or 1:1 graphics @ 60 FPS. Needless to say I'm going to eBay my old imagination and get a real one after seeing what Wind Waker and other games have become, all (well, most) playing at full speed. HUD and on screen text are still rendered in SD with no AA, and it shows when you look at them vs. the polygon elements. There's even a steroscopic 3D plugin for it. Sadly, I can't run Dolphin on any of my machines... so I'm stuck with upscaled my jaggies and being jealous

A quick refresher: these screen shots are the games we've all played before, except the textures were rendered in 720p by Dolphin rather than in 480p/i by your CGN or Wii. The difference made me faint, get up, then pass out again. And it reminded me that WiiHD would have almost no work to do... backwards compatability could make old games look amazing, and new games will look even tighter. Just... damn:

Wind Waker:





StarFox Assault blew my mind






Z&W:



Paper Mario



MGS:Twin Snakes



Umbrella Chronicles





F-Zero GX




NMH



MH:Tri

Not even close to likely. The Wii will not see such a simple successor. They won the console war on innovation, not graphics. Most people don't care about HD, though it is catching on.

They're also very careful not to annoy their current customer base. They have the best selling console and they don't want to blow it by releasing a new system.

Also, think about it. Sequels to their major franchises (Metroid, Mario and Zelda) are all coming out this year. Why would they announce a new system when their flagship titles for the current one have just been released?

I'll match your schedule for next year, maybe. There is no Wii 2 announcement coming in 2010.

There's no way a WiiHD is coming out for later this year and I highly doubt the new Zelda will either.

I wouldn't be shocked to see the Wii's successor for the 2011 holiday season and possibly even see a repeat of the Twilight Princess deal again.

I tried reading through that neoGAF thread. GEEZ those people are thick and repetitive.

GAF's biggest issue is megathreads getting so long no one can keep up with all the discussions... even searching can turn up 1-100 posts, so you never know who's said what before. It's similar to some of our topics over in the display devices forums, except GAF can get WAY more vitriolic.

Try weeding through the 3DS thread for new news... it's up to over 190 pages.

-vdz

WiiHD in 2010? Agreed - hell no! MAYBE some news of a new home console breaks in 2011...at best.

As to the new Zelda by year's end? I say wait until E3 before we decide as to whether or not that happens. Miyamoto & Co have danced around the possibility - and then will turn around & say it'll be done "when it's done". At the latest, though, I would imagine early-mid 2011.

Ninty has for the most part blown it's wad on the other tentpole games that we do know are due this year. And all are coming well before holiday season 2010. Zelda sure seems like it would be the big XMAS '10 Wii game for them.

That second Wind Waker shot is hot. I'm going to have to give Dolphin a whirl.

Okay. Wind Waker at 1920x1080 is hot. Sound is still a little juddery for me, but this has certainly come quite a way. I guess I'll give it another spin after I drop in my new Phenom II X4.

I've heard people say that Dolphin is all about your CPU, but I got a huge boost after switching from an 8800GT to a HD 5870, and its not like I have a real slow CPU either, Q6600 at 3.4. It runs pretty solid at 30 now on 1920*1080, 4x AA, 16X AF, with the beach hack on.

I officially have GPU envy... but it's good to know that processor alone won't stop the show. Having said that, the HD 5870 is as slick as snot on an icicle, it should be doing a lot of the hard work. Work my X1300 won't do. [/whining]

Are you overclocking your CPU to get 3.4 GHz?

-vdz

Yes, the Q6600 is factory at 2.4 ghz, so 3.4 is a fairly aggressive OC on air cooling. Runs rock solid with a Zalman cooler on it, and the case fans on medium. Its been that way for just over 2 years now.

which dolphin version is the most compatiable right now?

It kind of depends on what game you are playing. Some of the older builds may have better compatibility with specific games.

How about 5.1 DD support too..

Its there already. Most Wii games support Dolby PLII 5.1, which on a decent receiver sound pretty dang great, IMHO.

Ooh! That reminds me that I just dropped a new CPU in my machine yesterday. Time to give this a second whirl!

AVS scaled my image down, but you can see a couple key things. One, my four-core Phenom II X4 3.0ghz is taxed to about 50%, but not evenly across cores. I'd guess that something as cheap as the $100 Athlon II X4 2.9ghz would run this fine, but don't quote me on that. Paired up with my Geforce GTS 250, which is not an expensive card by any means, Wind Waker runs at a perfect, smooth 30fps at 1920x1080. The game seems to be hard capped at 30fps, unable to go any higher. A second thing you'll notice in Wind Waker specifically is that it is rendering different parts at different resolutions. Anything close with no filters run at the full 1080p, but distance items seem to have a depth-of-field filter over them running at 480p. It's odd, and simply an emulation artifact. Keep in mind that I just fiddled with it for 5 minutes. This may be an easily solvable issue by visiting the Dolphin forum and reading the Wind Waker thread.

Overall, Dolphin has come a long way since I looked at it last. It feels very much like ePSXe right around when Final Fantasy 9 came out. Very complete feeling, with some obvious non-critical issues left to resolve.

Oh, and the sound is still a bit chunky feeling. I'm not starving it of CPU to use anymore, so I'd guess that the sound engine is still a bit rough. Again, maybe it's something addressed on their forum though.

I think I'm going to look into some Wii action next. Mario Galaxy 1 would be pretty amazing to go through again at 1080p. I need to scrounge up a Bluetooth dongle and a wireless sensor bar now.

Oh, and I run dual monitor, so the split in the image is real time. Full screen emulation screen, with the CPU monitor running on the second screen.

http://dolphin-emulator.com/wiki/ind...The_Wind_Waker

Flipping through this wiki real quick I see that compatibility still leaves quite a bit to be desired. I say we revisit this again in a year.